Lana Turner’s daughter
may proceed with an action to block a longtime employee from gaining the bulk
of the actress’ testamentary trust, without risking a $50,000 bequest she
received, this district’s Court of Appeal ruled yesterday.

The 1982 document leaves
all but the $50,000, plus a few personal items, to Carmen Lopez Cruz, described
as Turner’s “close friend, employee and companion of over forty-five years.” A
larger share was not given to Crane, the document recites, for “many reasons,”
including the sums that were given to her by Turner earlier.

Turner died in 1995.
Crane has become quite well known on the talk show circuit, often discussing
the killing of her mother’s lover, Johnny Stompanato, in 1958.

Crane, who was 14 at the
time, claimed she stabbed Stompanato to protect her mother. She was represented
by legendary attorney Jerry Giesler, and the killing was ruled justifiable
homicide.

Crane last year
petitioned the court for a “safe harbor” declaration that her filing of a
petition for instructions would not violate the no-contest clause. Such
petitions are authorized by Probate Code Sec. 17200.

The basis of the
petition was Crane’s claim that Cruz had herself violated the no-contest clause
by suing the trustee for breach of fiduciary duties. Cruz claims that instead
of inheriting the bulk of Turner’s $1.7 million fortune, she was left with
“virtually nothing” because the trust was drained by taxes and
expenses—including excessive lawyers’ and accountants’ fees.

Cruz pled that she was
“was extremely loyal” to Turner and nursed her during her lengthy illness after
Crane allegedly abandoned her.

In response to Crane’s
action, Cruz said that granting the petition would “frustrate” Turner’s plans
and thus violate the no-contest clause.

But Justice Walter
Croskey, writing yesterday for Div. Three, said that all Crane was seeking was
a determination as to whether Cruz had violated the no-contest clause. Crane,
he reasoned, was not attacking “any provision of the Trust or any disposition
or distribution of trust assets thereunder.”

Nor, the justice said,
was the petitioner trying “to litigate some separate or independent claim which
was designed to thwart the trustor’s expressed wishes or which would
invalidate, or make inoperative, the Trust, or some portion thereof.”

Croskey emphasized that
the appellate court was not, despite “the parties’ repeated and extensive
invitations to visit the issue,” ruling on whether Cruz had violated the
no-contest clause.

The appeal was argued by
Perry L. Hirsch for Cruz and Darrell G. Brooke for Crane.